Cinema Spotlight-1926's Man Trap Starring Clara Bow

When it comes to 1920s silent film flappers there was triumvirate of stars:

Louise Brooks-The serious sophisticated flapper 

Colleen Moore-The good girl flapper

and Louise Brooks-The sexy flapper:

In fact Brook's is very prescient of another vintage star who came along decades later, Marilyn Monroe.  (Monroe even did a 1958 photo shoot where she dressed up as Bow).

Bow's seductive comic charms are on excellent display in the 1926 film Man Trap.

The film is basically a comic love triangle.   Ralph Prescott is a stressed out New York Lawyer with an office full of flappers suing for divorce. 



 After one blonde haired bobbed client plays footsie with him under the desk (in a pair of adorable diamante buckled heels)  He snaps.   

Desperate for a break from the modern women he decides to go on a vacation in outdoorsy "he man" country.  He settles on an isolated backs wood area known as, Man Trap.

Meanwhile, a trapper named Joe living in Man Trap is having the opposite problem.  

Tired of the woods and the lack of feminine companionship he decides to take a brief vacation in Minneapolis.  While there he meets Alverna, a charming manicurist played by Bow.

Opposites attract and soon Joe and Alverna are going on a dinner date.

A few weeks pass and the film returns to Ralph, the New York lawyer is not enjoying his out doorsy vacation as much as he had hoped.

Joe stumbles upon Ralph, miserable and wet in the woods and agrees to take him back to his cabin.  Ralph is thrilled to go, until he glimpses Joe's wife, Alverna.  It seems right after the dinner date Joe and Alverna headed to the preacher.   Alverna is clad in a charming gingham country frock, but her flapper spirit is shining through.

Soon Alverna is flirting shamelessly with Ralph who is simultaneously attracted and repelled.

Alverna throws a wild  back woods 1920s jazz party

and smolders in a checked wool dressing gown while Ralph keeps watch for hostile Indians.

Soon Ralph can take the temptation no more and not wanting to hurt Joe's feelings he decides to head back to the city. 

Alverna though, is sick of country life, and runs away following Ralph and planning on getting him to take her to the city. 

 At first Ralph refuses 

to let her come along, but fearing for her safety in the woods he soon relents.

The trip back to civilization doesn't go smoothly.   Ralph's guide absconds with their food and Alverna flirts with a helicopter patrolman.  By the time Joe catches up with them, the new couple are quarreling.

Joe and Ralph set to bickering over Alverna and complaining about her flirting.   Alverna quickly gets fed up with the conversation and laughing, heads off to Minneapolis in Joe's boat.

I truly wish the film had ended here.  Alverna is obviously not the marrying kind and would never be happy living isolated in the woods, but this is a 1926 film and films of this time didn't truly embrace liberated women.  So sadly the film does not end here.  

Ralph returns to New York, refreshed from his vacation and prepared to deal with flapper divorcees and Alverna, after a brief break in the city, goes back home to Joe.  Soon she's begging Joe for forgiveness and he's eagerly embracing her.   Alverna isn't so easily chastised though, over Joe's shoulder she glimpses a handsome park ranger and soon she's back to her flirting ways!

Man Trap is directed by Victor Fleming:

Who would go on to make The Wizard of Oz.  It has been fully restored and has excellent picture quality.  Man Trap isn't available for streaming but the DVD can be purchased on Amazon for $16.95.  It's essential viewing for any fan of Clara's charming silent comedy.  

WC Fields and Louise Brooks

Today marks the 136th anniversary of the birth of boozy comedy star WC Fields.  Known for his 1930s classics like My Little Chickadee and It's A Gift.  Fields started in Vaudeville and was already and experienced and established star by the time cinema came around.  In his 40s during the 1920s  he was older then most of the leading men of the period, but he was still a popular star.   In the 1926 film It's The Old Army Game fields worked with flapper icon, Louise Brooks.   Brooks and Fields  had worked together in the follies, and both being iconoclasts and something of outsiders in the Hollywood scene, they were good friends.   In the film Field's plays a put upon drugstore owner, and Brooks is his charming counter girl.

Luring customers to the shop with her charms.

It's a sweet film and fans of Field's will recognize many of the gags from his later works, like It's A Gift.   Field's is funny,  but I think he was still getting used to the new medium of film when this was made, and he is one star whose better, and funnier, with sound.  The best thing about the film is Brooks.  Its nice to see her playing a sweet small town flapper as opposed to a vampy one.    She's charming and adorable in her flapper frocks and I wish the film had more of her.

It's The Old Army Game can be seen in its entirety on you tube.  It's a good example of a silent comedy, with some big stars in the early days of their careers.  

-Cinema Spotlight Speedy 1928

When it comes to sikent films three best known slapstick comedians Harold Lloyd usually comes in third, behind Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but there's a lot to be said for Harold Lloyd

His be-speckled, ambitious characters captured the can do spirit of the optimistic 20s and his movies remain funny and charming.  (Plus he's the only silent era comedienne to have a character on the sci fi comedy cartoon Futurama named after him, Dr. Zoidberg's uncle Harold Zoid) 

Prolific even by early cinema standards Lloyd made nearly 200 films.  The best of the ones I've seen is Speedy, 1928

In the film Lloyd plays Harold "Speedy" Swift.  An ambitious, baseball obsessed young man with a sweet steady girl friend, Jane, played by charming flapper actress Ann Christy.  She really looks good in a cloche.

Jane lives with her grand daddy a curmudgeonly charmer who drives one of the last horse drawn trolleys in New York and who doesn't look to kindly on Speedy's tendency to loose jobs.

Which happens early in the film after his love of baseball gets in the way of his job as a soda jerk at the world's chicest soda fountain.

Not to be discouraged by his job loss Speedy does what any  love struck young man in 1920s New York would  do.

To get to Coney Island Jane and Speedy have to take the subway, and thus follows the best mass transit scene in cinema history

Coney Island's hey day was the 1920s and I've never seen film capture its former glory better then Speedy.

The adventure ends with Speedy and Jane having lost all their money,  but gained a mischievous stray dog.  The two hitch a ride home in the back of a furniture wagon, which Speedy arranges to look like the apartment they hope to share one day.  Note the dog at their feet!

Eager to earn the money to make his fortune come true:

Speedy takes a job as a taxi driver

With predictably disastrous results:

Though the bright spot is he gets to drive his idol Babe Ruth to yankee stadium.  Its a lot of fun for the modern viewer to see this early example of a celebrity cameo and Babe does a great job.

After the Babe Ruth incident leads to using yet another job, Speedy takes over Jane's grand-daddy's horse drawn trolley.

Eventually with the help of his dog he manages to save the trolley from thieves, becoming the hero of the day, and finally getting engaged to Jane.

Speedy is a delightful film perfect for established fans of silent slapstick comedy or those new to silent film.  Its available to stream on hulu and amazon prime.

Ill be going on blogger break for the rest of the summer until after labor day so I can enjoy my vacation. Enjoy these last summer days.